Netgear DG834G query

hi, i have a netgear DG834Gv1 and i wanted to know if the built-in hardware firewall still works even when its used as a Non-NAT router,? currently you set all machines connected to that router with static IP addresses in the 192.168.0/24 range, then you forward the port(s) required to be open the the appropriate machine eg: 22 (SSH) to 192.168.0.140 etc...

but when the router is being used as a Convential WAN router for routing public IP addresses e.g. a eg a /29 range that is provided from adsl24 or zen etc..... do you still need to port-forward to the static WAN IP's?

or do i just need to rely on a software firewall installed on each machine with a public IP ?

any help is much appreciated .

The firewall is the NAT itself to all intents and purposes. Use portforwarding in reference to public ip addresses, unless there is an overriding requirement.